Report on a news item that didn't happen. I was not aware that intelligence services had shut down al Qaeda, but it's certainly news that deserves reporting. This report is fair, with good comparison to the last presidential election.

There is no question that an Al-Qaeda tape was not released and that's news of a sort. However the writers' insistence that a release was shortstopped by intelligence agencies is questionable, at best. Jihadi tapes are still being released, perhaps not in the numbers before, but they are still out there. Many can be found and downloaded at http://clearinghouse.infovlad.net/forumdisplay.php?f=2. Jihadica at http://www.jihadica.com tracks much of the jihadi releases and is a good resource to understand what is happening in that field. To illustrate, I was background downloading a 40-minute, professional quality, video for the collection of a major American educational institution from two sites while I was writing this. There ... More »

Interesting story about a story that did not happen. The report provides reasonable evidence and context on this topic, though the sourcing is a bit weak. I did not know that Al Qaeda's sites had been shut down this year, which was welcome information.